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While short-form video -- typically user-generated -- once defined the world of online video, that world is changing fast. During the recent NAB conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, we spoke to Sean Knapp, then Ooyala's CTO, now Ooyala's executive vice president and chief product officer, about why live video is taking off online.

"Live video, or even more specifically linear video, it's really a lot of the content that we're watching on our TVs today, and we're seeing that move more into the online world as the lines really do start to blur between online video and traditional television," Knapp said. "We're also finding a lot of popularity with sports, obviously as we're able to actually get across more devices, simply because sports are one of the few types of content where being able to watch it as it happens is incredibly valuable to the consumer."

Live video consumption leads to longer engagement times, said Knapp. That's a win for the viewer, the content owner, and the advertiser.

Shortly before NAB, Ooyala released a study documenting the rise of live and long-form video. Knapp explained the study's findings.

"What we're finding is, from hours of content consumed, three-quarters roughly of content consumed across our broadcast customers is all in the long-form content realm. Less and less, percentage-wise, is short form content, and this is really indicative of the migration that we see from all the content that you and I watch on a daily basis on TV, it's just simply as it migrates online," Knapp said.